I was told when I was 165 pounds and a young teenager, that my ideal weight was 135 pounds. I’d just grown 7 inches and lost 10 pounds over less than a year, and they were telling me I should be NO MORE THAN 135 pounds at 5 foot 7 inches tall.

At 17, I got sick. I lost 30 pounds in 3 weeks due to mono, and I got down to 135 pounds. I looked skeletal. I was not healthy. They nearly hospitalized me.

I was 145 pounds most of that year, then built up muscle over the summer, walking, riding my bike, got up to a healthy 165. And then Freshman year, and I put on a little weight, and then I nearly died again, and then I got pregnant.

At 21 years old, I hit 250 pounds with my first pregnancy. I have not been below 220 since. At 220, I was actually strong and pretty functional and I got married to a man who doted on me. Two more pregnancies and a couple decades and a devastating chronic genetic illness diagnosed too late and I’m 350 pounds, and I tell the doctors, “Do not tell me to lose weight. When you say that, you’re telling me to gain 10 pounds. And that, I do not want to do.”

People stopped fretting about my weight at some point. Maybe the four pulmonary embolisms (none connected to weight) put things in perspective? Or my hair falling out? I get a lot more concern about how my cancer treatment went (that’s the one thing I’ve avoided so far, cancer) than my weight from your average joe.

There are few people who have tighter discipline around eating than I do. I’m gluten free (because of a documented allergy) and don’t handle sugar well (not diabetic, it just gives me migraines).

My blood sugar is fine. My blood pressure is great. I have chronic fatigue but that’s EDS for you and I’m actually doing better than a lot of people a lot thinner than me on the whole pain front, it might be that the padding helps reduce dislocations? Not sure.

I will never be 135 pounds again. I may never be 250 pounds again. But I’m here, and I’m breathing, and my children have a mother, and I’m still able to write.